Implementation of the Socially Integrative City programme requires municipal support in terms of complementary policies to give measures and projects legitimacy and medium-term guarantees. Strategies include organizing political backing, process evaluation for permanent controlling of quality management, citywide monitoring as a basis for well-founded selection of districts and as an early warning system for dangerous trends in other urban districts as well as coordination of neighbourhood and municipal development models. Moreover, it is essential to establish structures and strategies to consolidate and sustain the gains in the districts.
Soliciting political support
Political backing for programme implementation is a fundamental ingredient for the success of Socially Integrative City. This means, primarily, that district selection and integrated action plans as well as the new cooperation and management formats should be endorsed in resolutions - or at least in acknowledgements - by the city council or assembly, and that political platforms express commitment to Socially Integrative City strategies and concepts. Apart from this formal involvement of municipal government, participation of all local political parties elected to the city council and to borough committees in projects and measures is a vital means of increasing public awareness of risks and opportunities in the city districts and of the approaches adopted to solve their problems.
Municipal politicians face new decision-making structures alongside the traditional control functions mandated to elected officials. Reservations persist in some quarters about the shift of decision-making powers to the grassroots level. Many officials, fearing they will lose authority, resort to blockades and revert to an authoritarian view of policymaking. This attitude can only be changed by creating win-win situations and clarifying decision-making responsibilities.
Government proximity to the front line is vital to build new partnerships and to ensure that citizens assume responsibility and commit themselves to the programme. Having said this, we are delighted that municipal government respondents have claimed "success" in "bringing politics closer to (60 percent of) the districts". People on various sides of the issue stress that recruitment of municipal politicians as campaigners for urban district development and partners for all involved population groups should be accelerated by beating loudly on the drums with appealing, comprehensive information.
Process evaluation as a quality assurance system
Researchers and others have repeatedly complained that the impact and acceptance of the programme have not been systematically investigated. In fact, Socially Integrative City communities are not embracing implementation of evaluation despite this element of the integrated action plan being required by the Länder. Restraint and scepticism are related to uncertainty about evaluation methods and procedures and to inadequate explanation of the purpose and benefit. The strong emphasis on result evaluation aggravates the reluctance of those who feel it is too soon to measure the impact of the recently launched programme.
Municipal government players, however, anticipate positive effects of evaluation in terms of practicality and initiation of learning processes and thus tend to favour give-and-take process evaluation. Strategically oriented process evaluation enables investigators to qualify strategies, plans and projects, to redress misguidance and to dismantle obstacles to programme implementation. Project and measure auditing, for instance by commissioning status reports, has an impact, but only if continuous feedback takes place.
Initial evaluation-related statistical appraisals on the basis of survey findings suggest positive impact of centrally initiated programme implementation tools. More active process control - gauged by whether neighbourhood management has taken root at all three activity and steering levels and an integrated action plan is in place - is evidenced in markedly positive estimates of programme results, e.g. improved cooperation between agencies, higher resource pooling efficiency, healthy proportions of investment and non-investment measures, higher action plan viability. Process evaluation can also have a positive impact. Evidence for this effect can be found in responses to onsite programme support, and elsewhere. Evaluation and monitoring systems should be used more than they have been. In fact, they should be established as programme control routines.
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Figure 10: Evaluation and Monitoring in Socially Integrative City Programme Districts (n = 222; second survey - Difu 2002) |
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German Institute of Urban Affairs |
One result of the nationwide survey is particularly conspicuous. Just under one quarter of the programme districts (a total of 53) have no evaluation and have not planned any, which is in clear contradiction to the Socially Integrative City philosophy. However, this figure is affected by the year in which each district joined the scheme. In districts entering the programme in the second half of 2000 and in 2001, evaluation and monitoring have rarely become issues. Almost one quarter of all programme districts (55 units) report that evaluation has been introduced. Almost half (98) state that an evaluation is still in the planning stage. Three quarters of the 153 programme districts with implemented or planned evaluation say that investigation has been limited to the district. In one fourth the evaluation has also covered the area surrounding the district. In 56 percent of the cases, the municipality is the commissioner; in about 20 percent it is the Land; and joint initiation ensued in the rest.
Monitoring as a reasoned determinant of district selection and prevention
Indicator-based monitoring enhances the subjective evaluative approach. So far many cities lack microspatial datasets to differentiate social venues according to indicators of social situation, housing variables such as duration of residence, rate of removal and vacancies, health variables, local economics, etc. Well-founded screening of "urban districts with special development needs" requires detailed knowledge of conditions in the entire city. Since continual sociospatial reporting systems have only been introduced in a few cities, systematic indicator-based district selection has been a rare occurrence.
If monitoring systems were employed as permanent microspatial territorial observation, the choice of districts would be more scientific and the programme approach would shift from reactive to preventive. Monitoring signals adverse trends in restricted zones early enough for timely countermeasures to be installed. Permanent updating of data inventories could be harnessed eventually to factor analyse territorial typologies on the basis of additional qualitative features and characteristic problem solutions and strategy patterns.
Integration of district policies in citywide planning
Localizing the Socially Integrative City in the spatial living environment with direct interfaces to ambient problems and potentials has proved to be both correct and indispensable. Criticism has been voiced where districts have been carved stingily, excluding important infrastructure features or local economic sites.
However, successes in spatially oriented approaches are jeopardized when improvements in Socially Integrative City neighbourhoods entail the sociogeographical shifting of problems to neighbouring zones through displacement of underprivileged population segments, or when citywide policies have counterproductive repercussions threatening the standard achieved in the favoured district. These risks concentrate on school and education, labour market and employment, housing and infrastructure development policies. The bottom line is that district-oriented policy must always consider the entire municipality.
Sadly, dovetailing programmes incorporating district-oriented measures, projects, procedures and strategies with citywide development planning has remained generally in the realm of lip service. How to establish a relation to overall city efforts has hardly been addressed. Few proposals for organizing and practising such collaboration exist. To accomplish this goal, we need to develop additional organizational structures - e.g. advisory committees at the municipal level or city development concepts like those pursuant to City Renewal East - to coordinate processes in the district with those in the overall city in a reciprocal relationship. Only a few cities have erected such structures.
Municipal sustainment strategies
As in traditional urban development support, follow-up is an issue. Long-term safeguarding of improvements achieved by policies is a Socially Integrative City pillar. North Rhine-Westphalia districts, where programme support is expiring soon, have long been debating this aspect. That suggests that the subject of follow-up should play a much larger role from the start of programme implementation.
The main goal is sustaining major institutions and services that benefit the neighbourhood, especially by reconstituting them as self-contained structures. This takes more time than we originally believed. An average of 15 years were needed for the far less complex renewal focusing on buildings and architecture in past urban revitalization programmes. In this context we often pose but rarely answer the question of terminating or perpetuating institutionalization of endeavours such as neighbourhood management. Signs point to the conclusion that grassroots offices are indispensable as contact and coordination points for civic involvement and as the hub of player networking systems. They are the only means of guaranteeing endurance of district improvement and must be permanently and generously staffed and budgeted.
Translated from: Soziale Stadt - Strategien für die Soziale Stadt, Erfahrungen und Perspektiven – Umsetzung des Bund-Länder-Programms „Stadtteile mit besonderem Entwicklungsbedarf – die soziale Stadt", Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik 2003
